[Comic Blogs]

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[comics] Jamie Delano and Neil Gaiman on the 30-year anniversary of Hellblazer … I can’t believe I picked up the first issue of Hellblazer thirty years ago! ‘Jamie Delano is currently exploring a prose fiction career and his latest novels concern a character called Leepus living in a post-apocalyptic landscape known as Inglund. The books have a lot of synergy with his early Hellblazer work. Has he kept up with Constantine since departing? “My relationship with Constantine was a difficult and intense one,” he says. “Consequently I found it hard to maintain a monthly relationship once I’d abandoned him to the imaginations of others. I’ve dipped in now and again across the years, but inevitably we have drifted apart. I do believe one of the beauties of the complex character we have all jointly created, is his ability to represent, through different aspects of his personality, a diversity of intellectual and creative vision.”‘

[comics] Neil Gaiman on His Return to Miracleman … ‘I think the last issue to have been published was in 1993. Now we’re 22 years on, but I always felt like one day it would happen! The weirdest bit was [recently] pulling out a bunch of pages from the next issue that I’d written and looking at them and going, This is great! I’d completely forgotten this entire sequence of scenes! I wonder what happens next? And now I’m going, Can Mark Buckingham and I at least fake this well enough so that nobody reading it is going to go, “This word balloon is a 1993 word balloon, and the next word balloon on the top of the next page is a 2015 word balloon?”’

[stories] Neil Gaiman on How Stories Last … edited transcripts of a Neil Gaiman talk on stories. The full version can be found here … ‘We will do an awful lot for stories — we will endure an awful lot for stories. And stories, in their turn — like some kind of symbiote — help us endure and make sense of our lives. A lot of stories do appear to begin as intrinsic to religions and belief systems — a lot of the ones we have have gods or goddesses in them; they teach us how the world exists; they teach us the rules of living in the world. But they also have to come in an attractive enough package that we take pleasure from them and we want to help them propagate.’

[comics] Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Rises Again … The Guardian reviews Gaiman and J. H. Williams III’s new Sandman comic … ‘Gaiman’s return to Sandman was always one of those idle “wouldn’t it be great?” things for me, alongside “wouldn’t it be great if they made a new Indiana Jones movie?” and “wouldn’t it be great if the Sex Pistols reformed?” Which goes to prove you should be careful what you idly ponder. The Sandman story doesn’t need more telling; Gaiman presumably doesn’t need the money. I can’t say I’d heard people clamouring for the untold story of what Dream was doing before he was captured by Roderick Burgess. Therefore there can only be one possible reason for this comic’s existence, and that has to be because it’s great.’

[comics] A Portal to Another Dimension: Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and Neil Gaiman … the Watchmen Panel at UKCAC ’86 – moderated by Neil Gaiman … ‘I think that because there’ve been a lot of fascist overtones in Marvelman [Miracleman] people assumed that the superheroes had taken over. There aren’t really any fascist superheroes in Watchmen. Rorschach’s not a fascist; he’s a nutcase. The Comedian’s not a fascist’ he’s a psychopath. Dr. Manhattan’s not a fascist; he’s a space cadet. They’re not fascists. They’re not in control of their world. Dr. Manhattan’s not even in control of the world — he doesn’t care about the world.’

[comics] Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane: The Story So Far (March 1993 – March 2012) … Pádraig Ó Méalóid tells the story of the long and convoluted legal battle between Gaiman and McFarlane over Spawn and Marvelman … ‘Although Gaiman and McFarlane’s first meeting in court was on the 1st of October, 2002, nearly ten years ago now, the cause of their dispute goes back nearly ten years before that, with roots set in place some years before that, again. So, in an attempt to put it all into some sort of context, I’m listing what I see as the main points of their dispute, in chronological order, as exactly as I can, along with some earlier events, to put it all into context.’

[comics] Neil Gaiman Writes a Final ‘Love Letter to Batman’ … Wired on Gaiman and Andy Kubert’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? … ‘Well, the great thing about Batman and Superman, in truth, is that they are literally transcendent. They are better than most of the stories they are in. That’s jut Sturgeon’s Law: “90 percent of everything is crap.” Can you imagine how many thousands, or millions, of words have been written on Batman? Try to read them and you’re looking at 100,000 pages, perhaps a million, and you can assume that 90 percent of it is crap. Yet the 10 percent, and even better the 1 percent of that 10 perfect, is absolutely glorious. That pays for everything.’

[comics] The Myth of Superman — Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers on Superman … ‘Other heroes are really only pretending: Peter Parker plays Spider-Man; Bruce Wayne plays Batman. For Superman, it’s mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent that’s the disguise — the thing he aspires to, the thing he can never be. He really is that hero, and he’ll never be one of us. But we love him for trying. We love him for wanting to protect us from everything, including his own transcendence…’

[comics] ‘$1m a minute to film? No problem’ — Neil Gaiman discusses the relationship between comics and movies … ‘Last week an interviewer asked me whether I thought that the recent success of superhero movies meant that we might see a world in which comics that don’t include the capes-and-tights brigade might also have a chance at making it onto the silver screen. “You mean comics like Road to Perdition, Ghost World, Men in Black, A History of Violence, Sin City, From Hell, American Splendor…?”‘

[comics] The Sim/Gaiman Project — a collection of letters that Dave Sim has been sending to readers of Neil Gaiman’s Blog.‘…for those who haven’t actually responded to the offer, it should be known that the sometimes irrascible tyrant and fire-breathing dragon Dave Sim has been enjoying tremendously the response he received from the Gaiman blog readers and those whom they’ve infected with the knowledge. These form letters are delightful and charming and so enjoyable that now everyone who has seen one wants to know what others have received.’

[tv] Kenneth Williams Quote from Neil Gaiman … ‘”I’m a cult,” Kenneth Williams said to me, in 1985. “I’m an enormous cult. People stop in the street and point to me and say look, it’s that cult from the television.”‘

[comics] Suggested for Mature Retailers — yet another interview with Dave Sim — this time regarding Miracleman, Gaiman and McFarlane from 1995. ‘…basically asking Neil if, bearing the Spawn #10 metaphor in mind, it didn’t make more sense to let Miracleman out of his cage – instead of Neil spending umpty-ump million dollars and Todd spending umpty-ump million dollars to decide whose cage Miracleman is going to be in: Neil’s or Todd’s. So Neil says, “Well, the advantage of being in my cage…” and I interrupted him and said, “Neil, listen to yourself. There is no advantage to being in anyone’s cage.” And there was this dead air on the line. And I’m thinking to myself, This is nuts. I’m talking as if Miracleman is an actual person (laughs). And after a few seconds Neil laughed and said, “I hate it when you make sense.” (laughs) Which was a relief, because I thought what he was going to say way, “Dave. Listen to yourself. You’re talking about a super-hero as if he’s an actual person.” (laughs)’ [via ¡Journalista!]

[books] The Other Mother — Philip Pullman reviews Neil Gaiman’s Coraline [UK | US] … ‘When Coraline finds a door that opens into another flat strangely like her own, but subtly different (thus making the classic transition from here, where we live, to there, where the mysteries begin), we believe what we’re told. And when she discovers a sinister woman there, who looks a little like her mother but has eyes that are big black buttons, the matter-of-factness of the woman’s response when Coraline says “Who are you?” is both disarming and terrifying. “I’m your other mother,” she says. And so begins a struggle for Coraline’s soul.’ [via Robot Wisdom]

[comics] An interview with Neil Gaiman [Page 1] [Page 2] [Page 3] … On Sandman: ‘The point about Sandman is it’s the single largest body of work I’ve done. It was about 10 years of actual work. I started working on it in ’87, and finished it in ’96. That was a solid nine years, for eight of which it was coming out in the public, but for one of which was just me. Sandman’s 2,000 pages long. It was 4,000 pages of script. It was done over nine years and it came out every month. It’s still 10 volumes long. […] The only reason I survived Sandman, frankly, is that it was coming out every month.’ [via Sore Eyes]

[comics] Excellent interview with Neil Gaiman in January Magazine … On Sandman: ‘At the time that I was doing it, I was very much hoping that it would change things for the medium of comics. Looking back on it, I don’t think an awful lot. It did an awful lot for Sandman in that graphic novels are still out there, they still sell 80,000-odd a year, year in, year out in America alone. But what I was definitely hoping would happen was the same kind of thing that happened when I read Alan Moore was doing on The Swamp Thing. I went: Well, hang on. Here is someone writing stuff for adults and writing stuff with as much imagination and verve and depth as anything else out there: any other medium out there. I wasn’t going: Oh, I want to write Swamp Thing. I was going: Oh, I want to create my own one of these. It will be interesting to see if in a few years time, the generation that was raised on Sandman do actually start creating more literary and more interesting comics.’ [Related: Gaiman’s Website, link via Sore Eyes]

[comics] A couple of articles about Neil Gaiman …. From the Telegraph — Bitten By The Fantasy Bug and from CNN — Gaiman: ‘I enjoy not being famous’ … ‘The Sandman stands as a key text of the Nineties. In it, Gaiman drew together many of the currents that bubbled below the surface of the times: a millennial preoccupation with alternative spiritualities, a New Age interest in dreams and archetypes, a postmodern fascination with mythologies and storytelling. A decade later, these currents are no longer below the surface. Indeed, it looks very much as though The Sandman presaged our present pop cultural landscape, for today’s biggest stories – from Harry Potter to Buffy the Vampire Slayer – exist in spaces it charted first.’ [Related:Gaiman’s Web Journal]

[books] Brief Slashdot review of Neil Gaiman’s new book — American Gods. Gaiman: ‘If Neverwhere was about the London underneath, this would be about the America between, and on-top-of, and around. It’s an America with strange mythic depths. Ones that can hurt you. Or kill you. Or make you mad. American Gods will be a big book, I hope. A sort of weird, sprawling picaresque epic, which starts out relatively small and gets larger. Not horror, although I plan a few moments that are up there with anything I did in Sandman, and not strictly fantasy either. I see it as a distorting mirror, a book of danger and secrets, of romance and magic.’ [Related:Gaiman’s American Gods Blog]

[comics] Fascinating…. Neil Gaiman used to be a Scientologist…. ‘Neil Gaiman. Writer (sandman comics), former Scientologist. Declared SP in 1983. He was a Class VIII auditor, and ran the Birmingham org for a while. Son of David Gaiman. He was a case supervisor at the G.O. at the time of the CMO takeover of the G.O. and the transition to RTC/ OSA. – FAQ1.’ [via WEF]

[comics] For sale on eBay…. Neil Gaiman’s Leather Jacket!‘From 1989 on, it was my leather jacket, worn day in and day out, all over the planet, for the next six years, all through the writing of Sandman. In 1996 I retired it, replaced it with a newer stranger Talanah Gamah and Ieish creation. It’s spent the last four years in a wardrobe, being worn only occasionally. (Recently I had it professionally redyed, so it’s a uniform black.)’ [via Windowseat Weblog]